Considering time-lag and accumulation effects of climate is crucial for accurately evaluating vegetation dynamics under global climate change. Most studies investigate these mechanisms by examining the explanatory power of the overall climatic conditions of the same month of the day at which the vegetation index is recorded, or the preceding month(s). This approach, referred to as monthly climate approach, risks underestimating the importance of within-month vegetation index variations. This study introduces an alternative approach, the EVI-date climate approach, which considers climate data from a specified time period up to the EVI recording day. The explanatory power is investigated for temperature, precipitation, and solar radiation at a global scale. EVI-date climate generally shows stronger vegetation-climate relationships than monthly climate. The relative improvement in adjusted R